


Dying is for Losers

by sloppybxtch



Series: r+e [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fix-It, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, I Love Patricia Blum Uris, It's All About Those Intricate Rituals, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Richie Tozier Has the Shine, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-13 05:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21489019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sloppybxtch/pseuds/sloppybxtch
Summary: Richie Tozier had dreamt of Eddie Kaspbrak’s death almost every night since October of 1988, when the town of Derry lost a bright little boy in a yellow rainslicker and cherry red galoshes down a storm drain.He’d seen it nearly every night since he was thirteen. He’d seen it even when he couldn’t remember it in the morning, even after his mind forgot Eddie, but never truly forgot how to be stupidly, helplessly, hopelessly in love with him. Over and over and over again it had played, ingraining itself somewhere deep, until Richie’s body knew it like muscle memory.He’d done this dance a thousand times, and Richie thought it was about fucking time for some new choreography.-----a companion piece of sorts to my other fic, but this time everyone lives
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: r+e [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1545727
Comments: 27
Kudos: 239





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same sort of universe as my other Reddie fic, Richie Tozier Gets Off (One Last) Good One, but with a different twist. You don't have to read that one first to get this one, but check it out if you wanna! There are some cross-references here and there. And it's shorter (lol).
> 
> I love the theory that all of the Losers have some form of the shine, and then the idea that maybe Richie had psychic dreams about Eddie dying popped into my head and this fic wrote itself. Please let me know what you think in the comments below!
> 
> I blended together both book canon and movie canon 
> 
> TW: language, some references to drug addiction, slight internal homophobia, slight gore

— October 9, 1988

Richie Tozier had dreamt of Eddie Kaspbrak’s death almost every night since October of 1988, when the town of Derry lost a bright little boy in a yellow rainslicker and cherry red galoshes down a storm drain.

And he’d caught his first waking glimpse of Eddie Kasprak’s death the day after Georgie’s disappearance. Richie’s mind automatically corrected “disappearance” to “murder,” but he’d accidentally let that slip about forty-three minutes ago when he and Stan were still over at the Denbrough’s to deliver a pan of his mother’s homemade apple crumble and a sort of awkward solemnity he hoped was comforting, and Bill had _lost_ it, going into a fit like Richie had never seen, his face red and straining, ropy veins popping in his neck, spittle flying from his lips as he fought against his mouth to let him speak.

Bill Denbrough almost choked on the word “missing,” and Richie vowed to never mix up the words ever again.

Even though every street corner in Derry echoed worried murmurs: “_murder—murder—just a little kid_—”

Georgie was the first person Richie knew that had—disappeared

(died)

and although he hadn’t cried yet, it seemed like ever since Wentworth Tozier—grave faced as he hung up the telephone, leaving Richie thinking that no father had any right to ever looks so serious and so grey and so tense—had delivered the news that the little Denbrough boy was missing

(or mangled)

Richie’s body was constantly prepared to be violently sick. He had actually blown chunks then and there, because he heard Denbrough and immediately thought it must have been Bill, and Richie couldn’t even fucking fathom a world without Bill there to smack him on the back of the head and say _beep beep_ in his powerful sort of way. And then he’d thrown up again when his dad had quickly corrected course, because in that split second Richie had felt _relief_, fucking _relief_ that it was Georgie instead and that made him so viscerally disgusted with himself that his body fought him again.

Ever since, he hadn’t eaten anything. Didn’t wanna risk it. His stomach kept growling like a fucking feral cat.

Richie and Stan walked shoulder to shoulder along Witcham Road. Rivulets of water streamed on either side of his sneakers and Richie thought back to hazy days in Sunday school, when his parents had actually given a shit about appearing like Church Going Folk and suited him up in his tiny Sunday finest to spend the morning being lectured to by Father O’Denny, who Richie always assumed must have only gotten the job because he was too old and shaky to be put in the pulpit so he got stuck in the seminary classroom with a bunch of seven year olds. Richie’s only friend had been a little boy named Eddie Corcoran and they’d whispered and passed notes and nodded off and basically found about a hundred and seven different ways to distract themselves from the lecture at hand, so Richie didn’t remember many specifics, but he did remember the Flood with a capital F.

Old O’Denny had rambled on in his papery voice that god didn’t always love the world, and he sent a Flood with a capital F to wash away all the bad seeds. And the torrential downpour that had unloaded itself on Derry for days, with no sign of letting up, the downpour that people were saying swept George Denbrough away, reminded Richie an awful lot of a Flood with a capital F.

Maybe whatever it was that had taken

(killed)

Georgie had really pissed off the big guy in the sky (or whatever it was up there because Richie was no longer so sure) and the rain had come to Derry in particular to wash all the bad seeds away and wouldn’t stop until the whole fucking town was underwater.

For a second he thought about talking to Stan about it, but Richie wasn’t totally sure if Jewish people had a Flood with a capital F too, and he wasn’t really in the mood to ask, and for the first time in a really long time—maybe forever—Richie couldn’t find a Voice to speak in, not even his own.

Stan was quiet too, but the difference between Rich and Stan was that Stan thrived in the silence. It was the reason Richie’d been invited to go bird-watching one time and then never again — “if you don’t shut up Richie, you’re going to scare all the birds off” Stan had repeated over and over and over the entire morning and then just glowered at him on the bike ride back into town.

Stan caught birds in the quiet, and so he liked it. Richie just… squirmed.

He still wanted to squirm, wanted to squirm right out of his skin, but that was mostly because he couldn’t drive out a parade of memories of Georgie from marching around in his head. And no matter what Bill thought, Richie Tozier knew better than to hope that the little boy he’d given his leftover Lego’s to last Christmas would somehow just wash up alive, asking for a band-aid and an ice cream cone.

The silence was broken by voices, a whole bunch. Kid voices, and Richie recognized some as guys they went to school with. Richie looked up from the pavement to see a huddle of boys standing around something in the gutter. A storm drain. He looked sideways at Stan—shit, was this where—

Stan looked back at him with the same “oh fuck” expression in his eyes.

_Shit_, it was.

“I think this is it,” one of the boys in the huddle ahead said, with a sick kind of childhood wonder. Richie recognized the voice as Vincent Caruso, a kid in the same grade as Stan who Richie used to hang out with, before he got annoying and liked to follow around Henry Bowers and his stupid gang of refrigerator-sized dickwad cronies like a lost puppy. Everyone called Vincent “Boogers” now because of an unfortunate incident involving last year’s fall play, and Richie suspected this had something to do with his rapid descent into the dark side.

Richie and Stan kept walking, but stuck to the other side of the street.

“Fuck, it is,” Boogers said, still bent over the curb, and_laughed_. “Henry was right, guys, hey, maybe we’ll see some—“

Richie almost didn’t realize he’d crossed the street, and was now behind Boogers Caruso with his hands balled into fists. All he could see was red. “Wanna see something, Caruso? How about my fist in your face?” And then Richie punched the kid square in the nose. Richie had never punched anyone before, and no one had ever told him his knuckles would hurt like that, but Boogers was definitely hurting more as he went sprawling into a puddle on the ground. The other boys backed away, looking warily at Richie. Caruso started crying. Richie had half expected Stan to catch his arm before he swung, or to say “beep beep” in his quiet, sensible sort of way, but instead Stan stepped up beside him, silent support. This emboldened Richie, and he resisted the opportunity to shake out his aching knuckles. “Get the fuck out of here!” He screamed, and the boys looked frozen for a second. “Get the fuck out!” He yelled, his voice cracking a bit on the last word, but Vincent Caruso scrambled to his feet and ran off, his friends hot on his heels. And they were already leaving but Richie shouted “Get the FUCK OUT” at their backs, and he realized he was crying.

Stan put a hand on his shoulder, and Richie wept.

“He’s dead, Stan. We fucking knew him, Stan.” And Stan squeezed his shoulder and started crying too, and Richie wrapped his friend into a hug, and the two boys cried for Georgie like they couldn’t when Bill was around.

After a minute or so, Stan pulled away and sniffed. “We should head back,” he said.

“Yeah, Stan the Man.” Richie sniffed too. “Let’s go.”

Stan started walking first, and Richie wiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands and took a step when he heard it.

_Rich_—

It was quiet, hardly louder than a whisper, like it was coming from a place really far away. Almost like it was coming from the storm drain he was trying so hard to ignore.

And it sounded like—Eddie? What the fuck?

Richie looked around, but he knew that there was no way Eddie was there. Mrs. K didn’t let him out on rainy days, said he’d catch his death in the weather outside, and he’d probably slip on a puddle and break his arm or his nose or his neck.

“You okay, Richie?” Stan asked. He’d stopped walking when he realized that Richie wasn’t following him.

Richie pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I’m all good.” Stan nodded and they started off again.

_Richie_—

(what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck)

“You doing that Stan? What the fuck, man?” Richie’s voice was shrill.

“What are you talking about?” Stan turned around again.

_Rich_—_Richie__—_

Richie looked around, his voice had lost him again. The street was empty, there was no sign of Eddie—and Richie _knew _that, he knew that Eds was definitely holed up inside his house, because he’d called Eddie on the phone earlier that day to talk to him about the news and to promise that he’d sneak in to bring him some comics once he was back from Bill’s. And Eddie _never_ broke out of Casa Kaspbrak on his own, and the street was completely empty, and Stan was looking at him like he was afraid Richie was going a little crazy—

That must have been it. Richie Tozier was cracking.

He hadn’t seen Eddie in days, not since the rain began, and that was enough to push him over the edge and start hearing his best friend’s voice coming out of empty air. _Pull yourself together, Trashmouth_. This is definitely not chuckalicious.

He laughed a little, because that’s what he did when he was afraid. “I just thought I heard something,” Richie said, shaking his head.

And again—

_Richie—don’t call me Eds—you know I…I—_

It sounded like two voices layered on top of each other, man and boy, and fuck they both sounded so much like _Eddie_, and they also sounded like—

(fuck)

they also sounded a little like last words.

He bent over and heaved, suddenly sick, but there was nothing to cough up.

And when he closed his eyes, he could swear he saw him–a lot older, their parents’ age, kind of stubbly, but unmistakably _him_. Unmistakably the boy he’d already been daydreaming about since the moment they met as kids.

It was unmistakably

— October 9, 1988

Eddie Kaspbrak peered owlishly at Richie through the rain streaked panes of his bedroom window, as if trying to be sure it was actually Richie standing there and not whatever masked Death it was that now stalked the streets of Derry and stole away children like Georgie Denbrough.

“What’s the password?”

“Let me in, asshole!” Richie whisper-shouted, tapping angrily on the panes.

“Nope, not it, sorry.”

“I’m freezing my ass off out here, fuck you, man.”

Eddie laughed a little before unlocking his window. Richie’s fingers were already under the sash and shoving it up before Eddie had a chance to do it himself, and before he could blink Rich’d already slung a gangly leg over the window sill. The air that followed Richie in from outside was bitter cold, damp and biting. Richie dripped rainwater all over Eddie’s carpet.

“Well hey, there Rich, miss me or—“ Eddie was interrupted by Richie enveloping him in a very tight, very cold, very wet hug. Eddie yelped on instinct, and let out a little shiver. “God, you’re freezing.”

He half expected a joke about his mom, or Richie to say _you don’t have to call me God, Eds, just Richie is fine_ but instead Richie just sniffed against Eddie’s shoulder and that’s when he knew something was seriously wrong.

He pulled away a little, now his pajamas were soaked to the bone. He still waited for a joke that wasn’t coming, and concern grew like a tumor in his stomach. A bad case of what-the-fuck-is-up-with-Richie-Tozier-itis, comorbid with symptomatic why-the-fuck-is-Richie-Tozier-looking-at-me-like-that disease. His heart raced in his chest and he wondered if being friends with the walking chaos that was Richie Tozier would eventually put him six feet under one day.

“Okay, asshole, you’ve never been quiet for more than thirty seconds in your life _and_ you’re tracking mud all over my carpet. What’s going on?”

(c’mon rich please be normal again)

Richie just blinked at him. “You weren’t outside today right?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “My mom wouldn’t let me. She told me my immune system was too frail to handle ‘extreme changes in the weather.’ But you know that, I told you on the phone earlier—“

“—but, like, you didn’t sneak out or anything?”

Eddie furrowed his brows, then realized that Richie must be pulling his leg and barked out a laugh. “Okay what’s the punchline?”

(please let there be a punchline)

Richie huffed in frustration and ran a hand through his mop of dark curls, which now hung limp and sad around his pale face. Were those—tears? Or just raindrops? What the fuck was going on?

“I just thought I heard… something.”

“Delightfully vague, Rich.”

“Yeah, but you’re sure you were stuck in here all day? You’re not messing with me?”

Eddie thought about responding with a joke, but he looked at Richie for a long moment and shook his head ‘no.’

Richie nodded, more to himself than anything, and then shivered suddenly. “Jesus, it’s cold as tits in here.” He wrapped his arms around himself and gave out a melodramatic shudder, clacking his teeth loudly against the other. There was a moment between them, but then the corners of Richie’s mouth quirked up and he said, “Maybe I should go knock on Sonia’s door, see if she can find a way to warm me up—“

Eddie hit him in the face with his pillow. There was the Richie he knew so well.

(I missed you)

Eddie shuffled around in his closet and found some of Richie’s old clothes that he’d left there after some sleepover from days gone by and threw them on the bed. “Here, change. You’re soaked.”

“Aw, Eds cares about me—“ Eddie could hear the wind up to a _cute cute cute!_ coming, and immediately threw his hand up in the air.

“No, _no_, I just don’t want you getting my room all wet.”

Richie hummed, and in that hum Eddie knew he was saying a teasing _I don’t believe you_. “Shut up,” Eddie said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s a first.”

Once Richie was changed, and Eddie had snuck into the hallway to grab a towel for Richie to dry off his hair, they settled down. Richie had brought the comic books that he’d promised, and they lost themselves in the panels for a while. Eddie sat on the floor with his back to the bed, and Richie sprawled across it, taking up every inch of space like he always did. He was laying on his back, and every now and again would scoot up so that his head hung off the bed and he was reading upside down, unruly curls flopping all around his face, and Eddie thought that the way his boyish cheeks got all smushed and puffy because of gravity was the funniest thing in the world. Richie pretended that he didn’t know what Eddie was laughing at, but Eddie wasn’t fooled. Richie was trying to get in a few chucks, like he always did. He wasn’t a person that was unintentionally funny.

It seemed like some sort of peace had settled between them, that the wild-eyed, frantic boy who’d basically vaulted through Eddie’s window—a boy that genuinely unsettled Eddie, more than he’d admit—had been replaced by the familiar maniac Eddie knew so well.

(I missed you so much, more than the rest)

Eddie began to relax again, but Georgie Denbrough had disappeared only yesterday, and as much as they tried to breathe easy that truth hung above them like a boy-shaped noose.

“She thinks that it would have been me instead, is convinced she saved me by keeping me locked up in here during the storm,” Eddie said, hardly even registering that he had spoken at all. He didn’t look up from the page of his comic book, but read the same panel over and over again without really reading it at all. He felt the mattress shift behind his back, and knew that Richie was sitting upright.

“Eddie, did you see something—“ Richie’s voice was frantic again.

“No, no,” he shook his head, “she still thinks she’s a hero, all vindicated that she was able to keep her delicate little Eddie-bear out of harms way, or something. I doubt she’ll ever let me out again.” And then, pathetically, Eddie began to cry, a big fat tear falling smack in the center of Bruce Wayne’s face. He sniffed.

Eddie was still looking at the comic panel, some of the ink under that teardrop beginning to warp and bleed, when Richie slid down to sit beside him and nudged him with his elbow. Not to get him to say anything, but just to let Eddie know he was there. Eddie’d never been able to get Richie to shut up for a day in his life, but whenever Eddie was upset, crying like this, Richie suddenly lost all his words and let Eddie do all the talking.

“He’s dead, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question.

Richie scooted closer, like he needed the comfort too. “Yeah. But Bill—he’s messed up about it, Eds.”

“Don’t—“ Eddie sniffled, but Richie held up his hands apologetically.

“Sorry, sorry, I know. Just—just don’t say ‘dead’ in front of Bill. He’s…” Richie trailed off, lost for words again. “Real messed up.”

Eddie sniffled. “Me too.”

“Me three.”

Richie took the comic book from Eddie’s hands and closed it, tossing it into the corner of Eddie’s bedroom. Wordlessly, he held out his hand, and Eddie took it, and squeezed. They weren’t afraid to hug, but hand holding was something different, and to Eddie it was something done in the dark, in the quiet, in moments where no one else would ever see them, moments like this one, where the air was heavy and there weren’t any words and they just needed to feel grounded.

“Why were you so upset earlier, Rich?”

“Had a nightmare.”

“Yeah?”

Richie’s voice was small when he said, “yeah.”

“What was it about?”

And Eddie didn’t know how it was possible, but Richie’s voice got even smaller when he said, “You.”

(he’s scared of me why’s he scared of me why’s he)

Eddie swallowed, tried to calm down the race of his pulse. His hands got clammy, but he didn’t release Richie’s. “Oh,” he whispered, and then they just sat there and cried together at the foot of Eddie’s bed, and neither knew when exactly the other fell asleep but they awoke curled around each other on the carpet, still holding hands, blinking in surprise at the light streaming in through Eddie’s window.

“Eddie-bear?” Eddie’s mom shouted from somewhere in the hallway. Her steps lumbered closer. Richie caught Eddie’s eyes, his glasses crooked on his face, and he mouthed: “Incoming!”

Eddie tried to stifle his giggles—because _really_, this was serious, Eddie’s mom would kill them both, probably install bars on his window even. Richie vaulted himself across Eddie’s bed and tried to hide behind it, while Eddiescrambled under the covers and tried to look natural. He still had the almost uncontrollable urge to burst into a fit of giggles, but his mother’s imposing form blocking his doorway a moment later helped him regain his composure.

“Eddie-bear, you slept so late, and—wait a minute—“ her eyes narrowed to slits as she peered at something behind Eddie. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Richie hadn’t hidden himself quite as well as he’d hoped, and that his wild mess of curls was still extremely visible from where Eddie’s mom stood in the hall. He gulped, but when Richie sheepishly peeked his head over the side of the bed and lifted his hand in a wave, his mouth stretched in a shit-eating grin, Eddie couldn’t hold back his giggles anymore.

His mother’s face turned immediately, dangerously scarlet. “Edward _Kaspbrak_ tell me that _is not_—

— June 2, 1989

Richie Tozier caught his second glimpse of Eddie’s death just after school let out for summer. He forgot most of the dreams once he woke up, although he always remembered being scared. Scared to fucking death. Every so often, though, a strangled “_Richie—“_ would worm itself through his mind upon waking, twisting and writhing around in there, the death rattle of a not-yet-dead man. Of a boy who wouldn’t even _be_ a man for a few years yet.

And every so often, when “_Richie—Don’t call me Eds—you know I…I…” _played on repeat in his brain like the worst fucking song of all time, Richie would run to the bathroom and vomit until his entire body shook. He didn’t know what was happening to him, if he was just completely losing his shit, if Georgie’s disappearance

(murder)

had fucked him up so royally he dreamt about horrible things happening to his favorite person in the whole world and forgot everything except the feeling of total fear when he opened his eyes. Richie was good with Voices, he was good at finding them, creating them, plucking them out of thin air, and even if his delivery left a little to be desired, Voices were kind of his speciality. That would explain how he came up with this new one that haunted him at night, how he was able to imagine what his best friend would sound like once puberty caused them to sprout up like the weeds they picked in the Barrens.

That had to be it. Richie was a total nutcase. No other explanation.

That morning in particular he remembered more than usual. That awful voice echoed around in his head, weak, whimpering. And he remembered blood, little spots of it sprinkled all across his vision like some horrible kind of constellation. He knew it wasn’t his own.

Richie threw on some clothes and rushed out of the house faster than he usually did that morning, grabbing a handful of potato chips from the pantry for his breakfast. His mom was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of her neighborhood-famous mint lemonade in her hands. She quirked her brows at him as he barreled through the house, a half-amused, half-confused expression on her face, and Richie just kissed her on the cheek on his way out the door, tossing a “Later, Maggie!” over his shoulder in his best impression of Wentworth Tozier. He heard her faint laughter follow him out, but she didn’t ask him where he was going, or insist he had something more substantial than a handful of chips (_Richie don’t you know how much saturated fat is in that shit? It’s so bad for you, Ma showed me an article in a magazine once—hey, can I have some?_ Eddie would have chirped at him).

Eddie.

He hopped on his bike and kicked off as fast as he could, pedaling in the direction of Eddie’s. He lived close, thank god, and Richie knew that he could make it there in five minutes tops if he rode hard and rolled through the stop signs. He couldn’t put it into words, but he had to see him, had to piss him off a little, let that furrow between Eddie’s brows remind him of what was real, shake off the sleep that stalked him.

_Richie, I—_

“Fuck that,” Richie said aloud, shaking his head.

_Richie, I—Richie, I—Richie, I—Richie, I—_

The voice was stuck on repeat, like Richie’s first copy of _Tattoo You_ by the Rolling Stones that he’d bought (already used, obviously) at a garage sale. He listened to it so many times, and wasn’t the most careful with it, and before long it was scratched and warped and tended to get stuck halfway through the opening lines of “Start Me Up” so that Mick Jagger was frozen in time, crooning “if you start me up I’ll never stop—never stop—never stop—never stop” on repeat for the rest of time (or at least until Richie got sick of it and took the record off the player). But instead of Mick Jagger, this was Eddie Kaspbrak—a version of Eddie that Richie created, at least. And instead of the cocky, sultry slur of a rock star, this was the terrified rattle of a dying man.

It took on it’s own awful rhythm after a while.

Eat your hearts out, Rolling Stones.

_Richie, I—Richie, I—Richie, I—_

Richie groaned and stopped in the middle of the street, balling his hands into fists and digging desperately at his eyes.

(stop stop STOP)

He wanted to stuff up his ears with cotton, maybe pull his brain out through his nose, anything to fucking _stop_ what was going on inside his head. It had never been this bad before, and the hurt he felt was visceral and blinding.

“_Richie_,” it was the Voice, but this time it sounded physical, and nearby, and wasn’t coming from a storm drain or Richie’s dreams or whatever fucked up lobe of his brain it was that decided that nightmares weren’t enough, that the icing on the cake would be to sear these words on repeat in Richie’s definitely very awake mind like that stupid broken record—

(once you start me up I’ll never stop never stop never stop never stop never)

Against all of his better judgement, Richie opened his eyes.

And saw a dark-haired man, with big, round, soft, sad eyes that were lined with wrinkles but so fucking heartbreakingly familiar—and then brownish-blackish-red bloomed from an unseen hole in his chest and the man that both was Eddie and wasn’t dropped to his knees in the middle of the street and opened his mouth to speak.

“Richie, I—“ Blood poured from his lips. He was choking on it.

Richie heaved up the contents of his stomach on the pavement and jammed his eyes shut again.

“Not real, this is not real, not real, not real,” he chanted like a prayer, hysterical, holding onto that thought with everything he had. That wasn’t Eddie, his rational brain told him, because Eddie was a thirteen year old boy and that was most definitely a middle aged man. No matter what was going on, this wasn’t real, this wasn’t real, _this wasn’t real—_

That replaced the broken record loop. First it was the Stones, then it was not-Eddie’s dying breath, and now Richie was focusing every ounce of effort he had into believing that this was not real not real not real—

“Richie?”

His eyes were still closed, but he knew that it was Eddie’s voice. His Eddie’s, not the grown up voice he heard in his sleep. But this was still a trick, maybe he was sleep walking, maybe he’d wake up and it would all be just another dream wrapped up in a dream like a terrifying nesting doll. Maybe he wasn’t crazy.

(not real not real not real)

“Oh my god, Rich!”

The voice was closer now, and even though it was definitely the voice of a kid (and one kid in particular, Richie’s favorite kid of all time, quite possibly the best kid to ever have existed in the whole history of planet Earth) Richie stubbornly refused to open his eyes. He couldn’t see all of _that_, again, hallucination or otherwise.

But then there was a hand on his shoulder, and another on his arm, and then both hands were on his hands, and they were tugging them away from his eyes. “Open your eyes, asshole! Are you okay? Rich!”

Richie opened his eyes, and there was Eddie Kaspbrak. The real Eddie, fanny pack and all. And there were those big, round, soft, sad eyes looking at him with unbridled concern. His stomach churned again, for a completely different reason. He tore his gaze away from Eddie’s and peered over the shorter boy’s head—the street was empty. There was no grown man, and no traces of blood in the spot where not-Eddie had been in spite of the fact that he’d been spewing it all over the place.

So Richie was just going crazy.

The thought wasn’t much more comforting.

“Okay, dickhead, are you going to tell me why you’re hyperventilating in the middle of 21st or am I going to just have to start guessing?” Eddie didn’t remove his hands from Richie’s, and Richie was too shaken up by what he’d been sure he’d seen to blush. He opened and closed his mouth, gaping like a fish. How would that conversation go? _Sure, Eds, I was just catching up with you from the future, except you had a giant forkin’ hole in your chest, and were bleeding all over the place and just repeating my name? Good times, right? So chuckalicious._

Eddie’s eyes jumped all over Richie’s face. “Oh my god, was it Bowers? It was Bowers, right? Shit, are they still around here? What’d they do to you? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Eddie’s mouth was moving a mile a minute and Richie let him jump to his own conclusions. “Yeah, yeah it was Bowers and those assholes. I’m,” he gulped, “I’m fine, they just spooked me. But you know, I scared them off.” He grinned, and even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes, pretending made him feel better. So he kept on pretending. “With my huge dick.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, and it was glorious. “That doesn’t even make _sense_—“

“Made sense to your mom last night.”

“Beep _beep_ dude.”

Richie smiled again, and this time it felt genuine. Eddie was still holding his hands, and Richie wanted to stay like that forever. _Maybe I need to hallucinate more often_, the dumb, blustering part of him said—the Inner Trashmouth. “So why are you even here, Eds? Are you stalking me?”

Eddie rolled his eyes again, and stepped back. Richie almost pouted when their hands dropped, but stopped himself just in time. Maybe miracles do happen.

“_No_. I was on the way to your place, asshole.” He walked over to where he’d ditched his bike in the middle of the street. He straddled the seat and looked shy for a second. “I was gonna surprise you, bring over some movies and stuff.” Richie knew him well enough to read that look—Eddie was feeling trapped, caged in, and he had to escape to a safe place for however long it took to remember what it felt like to breathe easy. Some part of him swelled at the thought that Richie was that safe place. “I brought snacks.”

“Well in that case!” He beamed at Eddie, and Eddie beamed back, and the two of them hopped on their bikes and headed for Richie’s. For the first time all morning, Richie felt light. The two of them told jokes back and forth—or really, Richie told jokes, and Eddie spent the whole time rolling his eyes and complaining about how unfunny Richie was while trying to hide his smile—and for a second Richie allowed himself to think about a forever that looked like this, sunlight and laughter and their never-ending back and forth and maybe some non-trauma-induced handholding thrown in the mix. And to Richie, that kind of forever seemed really nice, as long as he could spend every day with Eddie Kaspbrak.

— June 3, 1989

“Eds,” He heard Richie mumble in his sleep, more slurred than anything else. Eddie had woken up first, and he was still trying to clear the sleep-fog from his eyes.

Light pried them reluctantly open, and he blinked for a second as he navigated the tricky momentary in-between of dreaming and waking. He was half-covered in a navy duvet, and curled into something solid and warm. He blinked again, and saw that it was Richie, his long lashes brushing the high ridges of his cheekbones, his mouth slightly open, breathing loudly and steadily. Richie slept like he couldn’t take up enough space if he tried, limbs sprawled in all directions, sheets tangled in his legs, while Eddie was a little heat seeking missile that always found himself tucked into Richie no matter how much distance he’d been sure to put between them before he fell asleep.

The night before, they had managed to convince his mom to let him stay the night at Richie’s so that they could play board games and watch the old B-movie horror flicks from the fifties that Richie was so obsessed with. Eddie had stuffed a bunch of the VHS tapes in his backpack, along with a whole bag of nothing but Mars bars.

When Richie’d seen that, he grinned up at Eddie, who just shrugged and said, “This way we don’t have to fight over who gets it.” It was never a fight, though—Richie knew that it was both of their favorite chocolates, but as soon as Eddie lay claim to one he’d back off immediately and spew some lie about how he liked M&Ms or Baby Ruth or even Almond Joy—ick—better, and Eddie would be so concerned with happily chomping away at his chocolate to call him out for it. But this time, Eddie was one step ahead. He felt very smug.

Richie had a basement in his house. Not a creepy, unfurnished one like Bill’s, but one that had a soft shag carpet and warm wood paneling and Richie’s parents’ old couch and a tiny T.V. It had started out as a sort of den for Richie’s dad, and also a place where Richie’s mom could dump all of the furniture she thought was too ugly to be in the main house but was either too comfortable or too sentimental to just toss out, but as Richie got older it became his place, his own little clubhouse where the Losers could have sleepovers and movie nights and eat junk food and throw popcorn at each other. It was one of Eddie’s favorite places in the world.

The problem with the basement was that light down there was purely artificial, and it was like a little corner of the world where time passed both slowly and quickly at the same time. They could spend days down there and Eddie would never even notice, hours just flew by. Unfortunately for Eddie, his mother did nothing but notice.

That night, time had gotten away from them and before they knew it the sun had already set and Eddie’s curfew was rapidly approaching. Eddie felt his chest get tight again, and felt Richie’s eyes searching his face, and without even having to exchange a word Richie ran up stairs. When he came back down, he was wearing his wild smile, and it was impossible not to grin back.

“You’re all set, Edster.”

“That’s way worse than Eds.”

“So you’d rather me call you Eds?”

“I’d rather you shut your mouth.” No, he didn’t.

Richie _tsk-_ed at him and leaned against the stair railing, arms crossed, smug smirk on his face that made Eddie’s heart beat just a little bit faster. “Now is that any way to talk to the guy that just secured your right to sleep over here tonight?” He raised his hands in a very showy way, like a rock star who was addressing a roaring crowd. “No, no, hold your applause, I am but a humble genius.”

Eddie gaped, and then started laughing. “How did you—“

“Tame the Sonia beast? Easy, I just started reciting these love sonnets I wrote for her. Wanna hear one?” He cleared his throat and put on a stuffy English accent. “Oh, Mrs. K—“

Eddie rushed over and put his hand over Richie’s mouth, still laughing. “Don’t ruin the moment asshole.” He then got the horrifying thought that if he left his hand there any longer, Richie would _lick_ it, a suspicion all but confirmed by the evil gleam in Richie’s eyes, so he hurriedly backed off. “How’d you really do it?”

“My mom likes Mars bars too,” Richie shrugged. “And she’s easy to crack. All it took was the promise of chocolate and she was on the phone with your mom, saying that you’d already fallen asleep here and that she didn’t feel comfortable waking you up so you could bike home, and you were so comfortable, and we’d send you over first thing in the morning, yada yada blah blah blah.” Richie got that smug look on his face again. “Easy peasy.”

Eddie knew that Mrs. Tozier would have done the same without the promise of candy. Sometimes, when Eddie came over to escape the suffocation he always felt at home, he would catch her looking at him softly from the corner of her eye, a knowing sort of look on her face that Eddie was sure all moms were born having. And she would always lean on the door frame when Eddie packed up to leave, smiling sweetly and saying, “You’re always welcome here, Eddie. Our home is your home.” He didn’t know how a woman as nice as Maggie Tozier had given birth to a boy like Richie.

Richie hit him lightly on the shoulder. “Alright Eds, stop basking in my glory, we’ve got the whole night for that.”

“I was not _basking_, dipshit. Okay what should we watch next?”

To celebrate, they rewatched _I Was a Teenage Werewolf_, and Eddie pretended not to notice how scared Richie got when Tony transformed into a monster for the first time. He didn’t understand how Richie could watch _Friday the 13th _and _The Shining_ over and over again and be fine, but a cheesy movie from 1957 made him go all shaky, but Eddie never teased him about it.

(never too much at least)

He barely remembered making his bleary way into Richie’s bedroom when the movie was over —although he _absolutely_ remembered to brush his teeth and made sure Richie did too, no matter how exhausted they were — and he definitely didn’t remember crawling into bed with his best friend, despite the sleeping bag they’d dug out of Richie’s closet and set up on the floor.

What Eddie did remember was the wild look in Richie’s eyes from the day before, when he ran into him standing in the middle of the street. He had been crying, and the sight was enough to make Eddie start crying too, although he wiped his tears away before Richie got the chance to see. Whatever had happened had shaken him up pretty bad, and Eddie found himself hating Bowers more than he ever had before.

“Eds,” Richie mumbled again, lips barely moving, half muffled into the pillow. Their faces were so close that Richie’s breath wafted into Eddie’s face and Eddie knew that he should be grossed out but he really truly wasn’t. Truthfully? He never wanted to move from this spot ever again. One of Richie’s arms was slung lazily over Eddie’s waist, and every time he murmured or mumbled his grip tightened a little, like he needed Eddie to be closer even in his sleep. Eddie hardly breathed out of fear that maybe he’d wake Richie up, maybe he’d shatter the sleep spell that suspended all the rules of the real world.

Eddie didn’t know what was going on, he didn’t know why his heart was suddenly having a very hard time beating like it normally did, or why his chest felt all light and fluttery, or why his head felt a bit dizzy the way it did when he was around Bev and Richie during one of their cigarette breaks and inhaled too much smoke.

But he did know that Richie was his best friend, and he knew without knowing why that they weren’t allowed to be this close when they were awake. It was against the rules. The moment they woke up, they were supposed to untangle themselves, to touch only in a teasing way, a casual way. They weren’t allowed to breathe the same air like this, and Eddie was supposed to think that it was gross.

But he didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to break the weird little world they created when they were asleep, a world where Eddie could curl himself against Richie and tuck his head beneath his chin and fall asleep to the sound of his breathing. So Eddie pretended he wasn’t awake.

And they held onto each other for at least a couple of minutes more.

—July 28, 1989

Clowns. Fucking killer clowns could burn in about a thousand different hells, Richie decided, right alongside Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter and Bev’s creepy dad and Sonia Kaspbrak whenever she made Eddie feel small.

He kicked ferociously at the door that separated them, screaming, pounding his fists so hard they hurt. “Eddie!”

Richie decided that he could burn in those hells too, because he’d been an idiot. He had left Eddie vulnerable, he hadn’t grabbed onto him, kept him close, kept his fucking eyes on him. The one time he was able to tear his stupid fucking gaze from Eddie was the one time that mattered most, the one time that Eddie was in danger, when he—

“Bill, fucking help me!” Richie shouted, still throwing his weight at the door. He couldn’t let his mind wander down that path. Eddie was alive because he _had to be_, because a world without Eddie being alive was a world Richie wasn’t interested in at all, and because he’d spent too long tormented by dreams of Eddie’s death for it to actually happen. No. No _fucking_ way.

Bill had already been helping, but he wrestled with the doorknob even more. They were both very close to crying, Richie knew. Bill loved Eddie too, everyone did, it was impossible not to, and the thought that—

Nope.

(no fucking way)

Eddie was not going to turn out like Betty Ripsom, or Georgie. He was not going to disappear

(die)

Richie would not allow it to happen. He already felt like he was being torn apart from the inside.

A noise from behind caught their attention, Bill was quicker than he was and tapped at Richie’s elbow.

Fucking _clown_—

He expected to see a gleaming grinning maw, wide open and ready for a taste of Richard Tozier, á la carte, a horrible chalky face hurtling toward him like it had done in the room with all the clowns just a minute before, and he was sure that this time he’d die. You don’t get to cheat yourself out of death via demon clown twice in sixty seconds, no one’s luck was that perfect—

But when he turned there was no Pennywise.

Something moved in the mattress, and Richie readied himself for the worst.

But he had no way of knowing just how horrible the worst could be.

Slowly, a head began to tear out of the grimy fabric, dark brown strands mingling with the stuffing and loose threads.

(fuck)

And beneath that dark hair was a face so familiar it shot Richie right through the heart like a fucking bullet, a face that was bruised and discolored, eyes dark, set deep above purple, swollen circles. His first thought was: what the hell is Eddie doing in that mattress? And reason tried to wrestle control, tried to tell him that this was another trick, just like the Eddie Pennywise had used to lure Richie into the room with the clowns— but that was so hard to believe when faced with a boy that looked exactly like his best friend. Reason was losing the fight.

“Hey Richie?” Eddie rasped, just a head jutting out of a mattress, unblinking. He grinned then, chapped lips spread into a smile that was anything but warm. It made every part of Richie turn to ice. “Wanna play loogie?” And then black began to pour form the corners of Eddie’s smile, and then Eddie began to laugh and the trickle became a stream, until Eddie was choking on blackness, thick and viscous and awful.

Richie screamed, and didn’t stop screaming, because in that moment all he could see was what he’d seen every night for the past eight months. A mouth full of blood, choking on it, and the strained groan—

_Richie, I—_

He’d kill that fucking clown.

— October 29, 1989

“Why are you staring at me?” Richie asked him without turning his head. Janet Leigh was saying something on the T.V. in the background, but Eddie was having a hard time paying attention. It was nearly Halloween and they were trying to fit in as many scary movies as they could, but that was hard to do when previous favorites such as _The Crawling Eye _and _I Was a Teenage Werewolf_ were now off the table—neither boy had to explain why. They got halfway through _Invasion of the Bodysnatchers_ before Richie abruptly shut that one off as well. “I don’t like the idea of someone not being themselves, you know, Eds? Like someone looking like themselves but being something different and bad,” he’d said, and his voice had sounded so small and scared that Eddie didn’t press the matter further, no matter how badly he wanted to.

And then they put on _Psycho_, which Eddie actually thought was pretty boring, and so instead he’d let his mind wander. And apparently it had wandered right onto Richie. He blushed a little, thankful that they’d turned down the lights in the basement to add to the ambiance. “I’m not _staring_.”

“Take a picture, Spaghetti, it’ll last longer.”

“Your face would just break the camera.”

Richie let out a hearty, goofy guffaw, slinging his arm over Eddie’s shoulder. “Eds gets off a good one!”

“Don’t call me Eds.” Eddie lightly shoved against him, rolled his eyes, played the part he always played, but he didn’t move away. And neither did Richie. “I hate when you call me that.”

(i don’t)

They’d almost died that summer. Many times. And yet here they were, sitting in the dark in his basement, eating Mars bars and watching old movies and joking and teasing and pushing the boundaries between them just to see how far they’d go. It was like nothing had changed at all, except for the lingering distrust of dark corners, of storm drains, of bundles of red balloons. They’d bounced back like rubber bands, and despite almost dying

(multiple times)

Eddie felt sort of like he and Richie were invincible. He leaned sideways, bounced his side into Richie’s shoulder, who nudged him back. The rest of the Losers were coming over later, whenever they could, but Eddie’d managed to sweet talk his mom (another miracle) into letting him spend the whole weekend at Richie’s. He wielded the knowledge that she’d been lying to him about his medicine for his entire life like a flaming sword, and it did the trick. Eddie held the best card in his deck, he’d shown Sonia just how strong his spine could be, and ever since, he’d managed to negotiate more freedom, lengthening the leash inch by inch. And he spent most of that new freedom with Rich.

Some weird, kind of mean and scary part of himself wanted the Losers to stay home, to leave him and Richie alone here, in the dark, where he could see the ridges of Richie’s sharpening face bathed in the flicker-glow of old black-and-white films. A sort of place in-between worlds, liminal space

(like Richie’s bedroom on sleepover mornings)

where Eddie could hold his hand and Richie could pull him close and neither of them had to talk about it, or think about it, or do anything but be Richie-and-Eddie, one word.

Suddenly, he felt Richie tense up beside him, only slightly, it would have been unnoticeable if they weren’t shoulder to shoulder. Anthony Perkins glared at them from the little screen, eyes big and brown and full of something. Eddie’s aunts told him that he was going to look a little like Anthony Perkins during one of their visits recently, and for a moment Eddie had thought it was a compliment until his mother gasped as if in pain and covered Eddie’s ears—actually _covered_ them like he was a little kid—and hissed out something about her son bearing absolutely no resemblance to a— pause for effect— _Hollywood queer_.

Eddie had pretended not to feel like she’d just shoved a manicured claw right through his chest—_queer_. The word burned him from the inside out.

“Do you ever think about what we’ll look like when we’re older?” Richie whispered from beside him, still tense, and for a moment Eddie’s heart pounded furiously against his chest at the thought that maybe when Richie saw Anthony Perkins he saw Eddie, just like his aunts, and that he saw a queer, just like his mom, and that it could disgust him too. Eddie’s stomach dropped, but he tried to ignore it and shook his head to clear it.

“Is this about what Bev said?” Eddie could still feel the lazy sunshine on his skin from that day by the canal, bright and happy for the first time that summer, even as the air was preparing to crisp for fall. “Because I think she was just being nice when she said you’ll grow into your looks. I think you’re doomed for life.”

(i could look at you forever)

But Richie didn’t laugh, not like Eddie expected him to. Instead he had that faraway look in his eyes, the way he did when he’d clamber through Eddie’s window in the middle of the night, wild and half-feral, grabbing at Eddie and holding him close as if to reassure himself that he was still there, still breathing. He never told Eddie what his nightmares were about, beyond a simple, searing “you.” But he hadn’t stopped having them. And every time he did, he sought Eddie out, and would sleep in Eddie’s bed, holding Eddie’s hand and keeping his head close to his chest and calming only when Eddie reassured him that he was there, that he wasn’t going anywhere else. That Richie wasn’t alone.

“You’re still having them, aren’t you?”

Richie set his jaw. “Yeah.”

Eddie turned so that he was sitting in front of Richie, blocking the view of the T.V. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought that they’d—I thought that they’d go away when Pennywise—“

The air in the room went cold, and both boys were half-afraid that they could summon the demon just by whispering his name.

Eddie didn’t know what to say to that, so he just took Richie’s hand in the dark, and pulled him in for a tight hug, burying his head in the crook of Richie’s neck as Richie’s hands grasped the back of his shirt, clutching Eddie so tightly he could hardly breathe. He rubbed circles into Richie’s back as his best friend began to cry, and murmured, “I’m here, Rich. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

_I’d die for you_, Eddie thought, with a stark and terrifying clarity, and held Richie tighter.

“I’ve got you.”

(and I’d die for you.)

— October 29, 2011

The first time Richie heard Eddie’s name since he was a teenager, he was thirty-five. Richie still dreamed of him long after he forgot his name, what he looked like, the way his nose would scrunch up when he got really annoyed, or the way it seemed like he never could manage to stay annoyed for too long.

Sometimes they were good dreams—more often they were bad, but mostly they were a mix of the two. The silhouette of a faceless boy who grew into a faceless man, smiling at him, holding him, dying above him.

(_Richie, I—)_

Richie chased that face even when he woke up and it went all blurry again, keeping his eyes pressed closed as if that shadow would shift into something familiar. He subconsciously searched every stranger’s features, wore sunglasses constantly so no one would be able to tell that he was staring at them as they passed to see if it sparked something inside, if the lightbulb clicked on in his brain. It worked for him because it was L.A. and always so fucking sunny, and because he was kind of a little famous.

He even scanned the seats in his shows, the seats he could see past the blinding stage lights, at any rate. Anyone sitting above the fourth or fifth row slowly morphed into an anonymous blob in the darkness.

The saddest part of it all was that he didn’t even know that he was doing it—it was some compulsion he didn’t even know he had, he was half aware of the fact that he was an avid people watcher but didn’t have the capacity to understand why he found strangers so interesting, or more specifically why he was so interested in finding strangers.

It was October in L.A., which basically meant it was exactly as warm and sunny outside as it was all the rest of the months of the year—“I grew up in fucking Maine, man,” Richie always complained to his manager, “how do you ever get used to no seasons?”

He’d been dragged out to a Halloween party at an acquaintance’s house in the Hollywood Hills. He felt like a fucking cliche, but Sandy had promised him that there would be booze, and that was really the only way that she was able to coax him away from his plans of sprawling out on the couch and having an old B-movie horror marathon all by his lonesome. He’d always loved the old scary movies, and that memory brought with it the tugging feeling of forgetting something, like there was a detail he was missing, a loose string somewhere unraveling. Something about old movie marathons that hung on the tip of his tongue.

Sandy showed up at his house with a high school letterman jacket and fake teeth. She wore a poodle skirt, long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Sandy was tall and sun-kissed and effortlessly lovely, and it would forever remain a mystery to Richie that she’d ever seen anything in him.

“What the fuck is this?” Richie asked.

“A costume, dipshit.” He loved when she called him dipshit. More than he should. “Put it on.”

He took the jacket from her like it would sprout fangs and bite him. “Can’t I just go as a bitter old drunk?”

Sandy rolled her eyes. They were big and blue, and ringed with winged black eyeliner. “Don’t be lame, babe, no one likes a stick in the mud.”

She strolled over to his home bar—a _huge_ upside to the whole successful comic gig—and poured them each a couple fingers of whiskey. Definitely more than two, but this was Sandy. She knew how to drink. He reached for his glass but she held it out of his reach like he was a bratty little kid. “Ah ah,” she scolded, before taking a sip of her own. “Not until you’re all costumed up.”

He sighed, and shrugged on the jacket. Something about it made him feel cold. He held his arms out to his side and turned in a circle, as if to say “happy?”

She nodded, and handed him his drink. He took a big gulp, enjoyed the burn of the whiskey against his throat. “There’s my favorite high-functioning alcoholic,” she half joked, and then downed the rest of her glass. “C’mon, let’s go, you can put on the fangs when we get there.”

“Fangs?” Richie echoed, “what am I supposed to be exactly?”

“Teenage Werewolf,” she responded, brushing past him to put her glass in the sink. “I know how much you like those old movies and thought that it could be—“

Richie didn’t hear the rest of her sentence because he ran into the bathroom and promptly puked up everything he’d eaten that day. He didn’t know why, but suddenly it felt like his heart was about to beat right out of his chest. Like something was clawing it, still-beating out of his chest—

(Bill, faster ride faster please)

He saw claws, and fur, and silver-gold eyes bulging out of a canine skull, and a letterman jacket emblazoned: RICHIE TOZIER

(Bill he’s gonna get me! Bill!)

He had no fucking clue who Bill was, what these fleeting images of something were or meant, but his head was spinning again and he squeezed his eyes shut so hard it almost hurt.

He heard the bathroom tap turn on, then felt a small hand on his shoulder, and opened them to see Sandy handing him a glass full of water. “Richie, babe? You’re okay, right?”

The question she left unspoken hung heavy between them—_Richie, babe, you’re not using again, right?_ They’d met five years ago when Richie was in the middle of a mild

(definitely not mild)

coke addiction, and she had a nasty habit herself, and the first time they kissed had been right after they snuck off to do a line in the bathroom at a party a lot like the one they were going to that night. He'd pretended that he'd felt something, continued pretending for years. They’d gotten worse together, but they’d also gotten clean together. Sandy had every right to worry.

“Yeah, kid, of course I am.” She narrowed her eyes at him as he took a drink. “I’ll pee in a cup if you don’t believe me.”

She cracked a half-smile, and sat with him on the floor. “Still wanna make an appearance?”

He took another sip, feeling better, those weird images

(memories)

already fading back into a haze. “You’re all dressed up, don’t wanna leave you with nowhere to go.” He reached over and tugged her ponytail. “Who are you supposed to be anyway? Sandy from Grease?”

Sandy groaned and slumped against the cabinet. “Fuck, that’s what it looks like huh? I was trying to go for the Yvonne Lime to your Michael Landon. You know, the whole 50s leading lady look.”

“Can I go as a generic 50s jock instead?”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I thought _I Was a Teenage Werewolf_ was your favorite?”

Richie tried to smile, but it felt like a grimace.

“It actually scares me shitless.”

A couple hours later, they found themselves back at Richie’s. The party was lame—well not lame by anyone else’s standards, it was packed and lively and there were pretty girls and drugs aplenty—but it just made Richie feel old and sober, despite the whiskey sours he was shooting back like they were juice boxes. Sandy felt the same way, and they’d decided to ditch it early to finish off a bottle of whiskey and watch re-runs of _Cheers_. Sandy got the bright idea that they should go for a midnight swim in Richie's pool, still wearing their old Americana getups, and afterwards they just laid on the floor in Richie's living room, hair wet, in nothing but their underwear, talking about nothing and everything the way that they always did. 

Sandy was this weird little burst of light in his life, and he followed her around like a moth to a flame. He wasn’t going to say that they completed each other—because they didn’t—and it wasn’t like he had been lost until he met her—because he was still definitely wandering around, aimless—but they made sense, him and Sandy. She was a radio dj and made fun of his music in a way that he knew meant that she actually liked it a little, and she would drag him out of his funks and bring him to the gym or the beach or try to teach him to surf. She laughed at his jokes, but only when they were actually funny, and was the first to call him out when he was a little shit.

She challenged him in a way that was warm and wild and painfully familiar.

He both loved the hell out of her and didn’t love her enough, or didn’t love her in the way they both knew _needed_ to be enough. He’d once thought about asking her to marry him, because they’d been together so long and she was something like home to him, but the words always felt like ash in his mouth, and so he told her that they should break up instead. She started cracking up, and he felt offended for a second—Richie didn’t like being funny on accident, he always wanted to know exactly why he was the butt of a joke—but then she told him between laughs that she’d been about to say the same thing.

They still had a standing appointment at their favorite bar every Wednesday night, and still talked to each other every day, and still apparently went in matching costumes to Hollywood parties, but they weren’t trying to be anything they weren’t. There was no pressure on their something to be anything, and that suited them just fine.

He stopped feeling like he had to search for something in the curve of her eyes, the turn of her nose, something a part of him knew he would never find there.

“So I met someone,” Sandy said, grinning around the filter of her cigarette. She was a vegan who smoked like a chimney, and that entertained him endlessly.

“Shit, kid!” Richie exclaimed, but he beamed at her. “Hotter than me?”

“Definitely. Funnier, too.”

“Fuck, maybe I’ll date him instead.” It was a joke, but if anyone else had been there Richie knew his veins would go cold. Sandy saw right through him, knew the things he never dared to speak aloud. Thank god someone did.

“Paws off, Tozier. _She_’s into hot blondes, not stubbly, hoodie-wearing dickheads.”

“You wound me.” He stole her cigarette and took a long drag, even though he already had one of his own. She swatted at his chest. “Have you two..." He trailed off, made a couple gestures and insinuated something with a playful wiggle of his eyebrows. 

“Oh, fuck no. I haven’t even asked her out yet.”

“But you’re gonna?”

“Hell yeah, I’m gonna.” Sandy grinned in a smug sort of way. She was hot shit, and she knew it. She wore bell-bottoms in 2011 despite being a product of the 80s, and there was a little bit of rock n’ roll in every swing of her hips.

Richie gave her a high five.

They stared at the ceiling for a bit in companionable silence, each lighting up a second cigarette, before Sandy spoke again.

“So, now that we’re both ready to mingle— are you gonna find Eddie?”

He didn’t know why but the phrase felt like a punch in the gut. It got harder to breathe. “Who the fuck is Eddie?”

She took a long drag, let the smoke curl lazily from her lips. “You tell me, man.”

His chest was getting all panicky again, heart fluttering, lungs constricting—

(like an asthma attack)

Had he ever even seen someone have an asthma attack? He was sure he hadn’t, but still—

(ben bev bill stan mike eddie eddie eddie eddie)

He took another drag, shook his head—and as soon as they flooded into his head the names were gone, nothing but wisps of something in his mind, dematerializing like the smoke that trailed from his mouth the moment he reached for them. Was he losing his fucking mind? He almost felt more sane when he was on cocaine. “I don’t—I don’t know, I don’t think I know an Eddie—“

“Rich,” Sandy looked over at him, blue eyes half lidded. She was using her no-bullshit voice. “You say his name basically every night in your sleep. We were together five years and never once did you shout out ‘oh, Sandy!’ in between snores.” She rolled her eyes, tried her best to look offended. Failed. “And despite all that, you’re telling me you don’t know an Eddie.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

Richie furrowed his brows, that faceless dream figure floating around in his brain. He felt a tugging, like something deep in his gut was trying to tell him _something_, to pull him somewhere, but try as he might he could not remember a damn thing. It was all hazy, like cigarette smoke. He took another drag, held it a little longer than normal, felt the burn against the walls of his throat.

“Alright, babe,” Sandy said, leaning over him to stub out her cigarette in the ashtray, “keep your secrets.”

And a little while later, when he was beginning to drift into sleep, he swore that he saw big round brown eyes when he closed his own, and he heard a voice, strangled but soft, calling out to him from somewhere impossibly far away.

_Richie, you know I_—

— May 28, 2016

Oh.

There he was.

It was a stupid thought, but every cell in Richie Tozier’s body screamed it all at once when he walked into the private room at Jade of the Orient. It hit him with the force of a thousand fucking trains all at once, harder than any of the memories that had wandered back into his brain the second he heard Mike’s voice on the other end of the phone.

Ben was there, and Beverly, and they were both so sickeningly, effortlessly beautiful that Richie’d immediately had a hard time believing that once upon a time they’d shared cigarettes in a clubhouse or listened to music on a walkman together. Bev grinned at him, wide and wild, and he realized why he’d felt so at home with Sandy. She and Bevvie would’ve got on like a house on fire.

And there was Mike, tall and gentle and steady, with a kind, bright smile and a honey-sweetness in his brown eyes. He remembered those eyes going soft and dreamy beneath a flowery shower cap. Florida—Mike had always mentioned Florida. Had he gone? Richie hoped beyond hope that he had. Or would.

But then the man beside Mike turned, and fixed Richie with that stare, and the entire rest of the world—rest of the universe—melted away and funneled down into one thought: Oh, there he was.

Suddenly the faceless formless shape that Richie didn’t realize he’d spent his entire adult life searching for came into blinding clarity. Eddie Kaspbrak slotted perfectly into the anonymous figure that had followed him everywhere he went, pressed against his eyelids as he slept, eluded him in every crowd.

It was _him._

Oh. There he was.

Richie began remembering the dreams, remembered that smile spewing blood, those eyes so wide and frightened and glassy, the way his voice rasped as he cried Richie’s name—

And then Richie remembered everything else. The first time they met when they were in elementary school, both small and chirpy, bickering even then over comic book characters but instantly connected, fused at the hip, Richie-and-Eddie. Bike rides down to the Barrens, Eddie’s tiny practiced fingers smoothing band-aids over scraped knees; the first really bad asthma attack, when Bill wasn’t there and Richie was half out of his mind with worry and how that was the day Richie insisted on always having a spare inhaler on him, just in case. Sunny days in the quarry, chicken fights, Eddie’s legs slung over Richie’s shoulders, wrestling in the water and relishing how close they could be without being close enough. Fighting over a hammock, sharing Mars bars and ice creams, horror movie marathons in Richie’s basement. Sitting on his roof at sunset, listening to love songs, The Cure, goodbye heavy in both their throats.

A whole childhood full of fingers brushing, too-tight hugs, a hundred maybe-almosts that left Richie’s cheeks flushed and kept him up at night.

How Eddie was his home, this whole time. How Richie’d given him his heart nearly three decades ago and had spent the same amount of time wandering through life, desperately searching for it but never knowing where to start.

_Richie, I—_

That voice threatened to creep back into his brain, but Richie cut that shit off before it could start.

_Fuck off_, he said to himself. _Not tonight. Tonight, I’m home._

And _oh_, there he was.

— May 30, 2016

Richie was going to die. And even if he wasn’t going to die, Eddie was going to _kill that fucking clown_. Just for good measure.

Richie looked so _dead_, floating there, caught in the glow of the the deadlights. Completely lifeless, entirely empty. It almost made Eddie’s heart cave inside his chest, but the rational part of his brain reminded him that he’d seen this before, that he’d seen Bev like this before. 

So Richie wasn’t dead but he was somewhere—somewhere where Eddie couldn’t follow, and that was pissing Eddie _off_, and Pennywise was the one who was holding him there, and that pissed Eddie off more, and there was so much rage inside of him that he thought he would choke on it.

Without thought, without hesitation, Eddie raced forward. It was still focused on Richie, It’s maw a horrible gleaming tractor beam holding Richie’s limp, lifeless form high above Eddie’s reach, like one of the keep-away games they’d played as kids.

He remembered holding Richie in the dark, letting him cry, murmuring against his neck.

(I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’d die for you. A hundred times over, I’d die for you)

“Richie!” Eddie screamed.

(a hundred times over, I’d die for you)

While It didn’t move a centimeter, Eddie felt It lock onto him, could feel the leering glare, the unbridled glee of a predator playing with It’s food.

He felt frozen in that glare for a moment.

_I’ll blow you for a dime _It hissed at Eddie, voice languid, low: the Leper. Eddie felt his skin crawl, that familiar horrible—

Then, the voice changed, became almost like a mockery of Richie’s: _but I bet if you asked him, he’d do it for free_—

_“_Beep fucking beep, motherfucker!” That rage _tore_ out of Eddie, and he briefly tightened his grip on the makeshift iron spear.

It kills monsters, Bev had told him, if Eddie believed it did. And Eddie sure fucking _believed_, and let the spear fly.

Right into It’s gullet.

Beep fucking beep.

— May 30, 2016

Richie felt like a spike had been driven into his head, that his eyes had been flooded with molten lava, that he might never see again. But then he felt a warm pressure on his mouth—_a kiss?—_ and it felt like his heart was about to fly right out of his chest, and when he blinked the world shot into painful clarity.

He was free.

And there was Eddie.

(oh, there he was)

Deep lines cut across his face, showed his age, but his eyes were the same as they always were. And now they were bright, and soft, and brimming with tears, warm with an emotion Richie couldn’t name as they looked down at him.

“Richie, man—“

Oh, _fuck_.

Deja vu barreled into Richie with the force of a hundred trains. He knew this moment. It had played before him in the Deadlights, not once but a hundred thousand times, each more gruesome than the next, It’s way of tenderizing It’s meat before a big feast. There was truth there, but only kernels of it, distorted and distended to create the most terrifying shapes It could. Eddie impaled, Eddie bleeding out, Eddie’s throat spilling blood like a fountain, Eddie dying above him, Eddie going cold, so cold, too cold.

But he hadn’t just seen this in the Deadlights.

He’d seen this nearly every night since he was thirteen. He’d seen it even when he couldn’t remember it in the morning, even after his mind forgot Eddie, but never truly forgot how to be stupidly, helplessly, hopelessly in love with him. Over and over and over again it had played, like his fucking broken Rolling Stones record,ingraining itself somewhere deep, until Richie’s body knew it like muscle memory.

He’d done this dance a thousand times, and Richie thought it was about fucking time for some new choreography.

“Sorry to interrupt the moment,” he said, as he pulled Eddie to him in a crushing embrace and rolled them both to the left. Eddie gasped sharply, but Richie didn’t give himself time to consider what that gasp meant, if he was hurt, if he was surprised—because the only thing his mind had room for in that second was keeping this idiot alive.

Pain bloomed on his forearms, then dragged lightly along the side of his torso, and then he heard a _whoosh_ beside his ear. He heard a scream start and then die on Beverly’s lips as he moved, slightly, bracing himself over Eddie on his elbows. “Richie!”

“We’re okay!” Richie half-laughed, half-sobbed. His mind screamed those words over and over, giddy and disbelieving—_We’re okay! He’s okay! _Eddie was blinking up at him, terrified and confused and _alive, so alive_. Eddie raised his hand to Richie’s face, cupped his face, stroked his thumb across his cheekbone.

“Richie, I—“

Richie leaned down without thinking and kissed Eddie. He pressed everything he had into that kiss, every warm touch, every maybe-almost, every joke thinly disguising a terrified _I love you_.

Eddie was okay. Eddie would always be okay. That thought made Richie feel so light that he was sure he could sprout wings and fly.

And the best thing about all of this was that Eddie Kaspbrak was kissing him back.

_Not the time, not the place_, some underdeveloped logical side of his brain scolded, finally deciding to join the party, and as much as Richie wanted to close his eyes and lose himself in this feeling forever there was the very real and very inescapable fact that they had nearly been skewered by a homicidal spider-clown and it was entirely possible that It might try again.

He pulled away after a moment, still crying, still smiling, still laughing, and pressed his forehead briefly against Eddie’s. “I know, Eds,” he whispered against his lips. “I do too.”

Eddie beamed up at him and crushed him into another too-brief kiss.

“Come on, Rich,” Eddie said on a laugh, a little breathless, “let’s go kill this fucking clown.”

— June 1, 2016

The bridge hadn’t changed since 1989. There were definitely little adjustments—more names swirled together in the old grain of the wooden fence, a couple areas seemed freshly painted—but the covered bridge still stood, the trees still loomed all around.

Richie’s breath caught in his throat as he shut the rental car door and headed for the spot he hadn’t seen since he was fourteen.

“Rich?” Eddie asked, still sitting in the passenger side of the Mustang. “Any reason we’re stopped on the side of a remote road?”

It still hadn’t set in for Richie—it felt like his entire life had been one big countdown to the worst day of his life, the day that Eddie died, but somehow he’d cheated the system. He didn’t know what to do with himself, without that constant dread he lugged around like a cement block chained to his feet, even when he didn’t know what it meant or what he was meant to be afraid of. He felt lighter, and he felt younger. Everything was heightened, everything was bright, everything was new. It made him feel a bit squirmy at times, a forty-year-old cynical comic had no business looking at the world through the eyes of a teenager again, but through it all, there was Eddie. Alive and happy and just as adorably short-fused as ever. Richie would sell his own soul a hundred thousand times for the opportunity to spend the rest of his days pushing Eddie’s buttons. Maybe he already had.

“C’mon, Spaghetti,” Richie jerked his head toward the covered section of the bridge, the fence that hugged the road just in front of it. “There’s something I want to show you before we go.”

_We. _He could sprout wings and fly.

He heard some grumpy grumblings—Eddie was still pissed about his nickname, Richie guessed, which was all the more reason to shout “Eddie Spaghetti” from the heavens every chance he got—but then he heard the door open and shut, and soon Eddie was standing right beside him. He was as fidgety as Richie felt, looked a little nervous.

“Relax, Eds, there aren’t any clowns anymore,” Richie said softly, nudging Eddie with his elbow.

“I _know_, asshole. I was there.”

And now he was here. Standing. Whole. No fucked up chest wounds to speak of. Richie still could hardly believe it.

They hadn’t escaped unscathed—the talon managed to slice a gnarly-looking gash along Eddie’s back and obliques, and it had caught both of Richie’s arms as he rolled them to safety—but they were all bandaged up and clear to go. And they would both be sporting some pretty badass scars in a couple weeks time. Not that that brought much comfort to Eddie, who spent about eight hours freaking out about grey water and staph infections and tetanus and shouting things like “do you even _appreciate_ the risks of wading through a literal sewer with open fucking wounds, Richie?” Richie thought for a second that they might have to sedate him like zookeepers do to the sick animals, otherwise Eddie would spend the next three and a half weeks spouting off horrible medical possibilities with increasing hysteria, each more dire than the next.

The two men reached the spot, and memory hit Richie square in the chest. It was almost like he _was_ thirteen again, terrified but still riding the high of victory over a demon clown, still clinging to the bravery he summoned in the catacombs beneath Derry to do the scariest thing he’d ever done, Pennywise be damned. And all these years later, painted over and a little faint but unmistakably visible, was a scrawled _R+E._

Those letters had stayed in Derry when Richie hadn’t, had tied the two of them together even when they forgot, had always been beckoning them home.

God, how had he ever forgotten Eddie?

And despite the kissing in the sewers, despite the almost confession, Richie was nervous as hell. He still got stage fright every time he did a live show, and that stupid _R+E_ felt like an unforgiving spotlight, and the stupid man standing next to him felt like every dry crowd he’d ever faced all rolled up into one. He prayed that he could make it through what he was about to do without hurling. One last gift from the Turtle, or whatever.

“So, uh,” Richie said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jacket, using one to gesture to the fence. His voice was smaller than he’d intended. “That’s it. Um, that’s what I, uh. Wanted to show you.”

Eddie quirked an eyebrow, followed Richie’s gaze to those faded, blocky letters—and immediately burst into laughter.

(fucking ouch)

Richie let out a terrified half-chuckle, the laugh of a man who doesn’t get the joke but is too scared to admit it. He fought the urge to turn all of this around into one big joke and stomp back into the Mustang and drive until he couldn’t see straight

(not like I can ever see straight am I right)

and never ever look Eddie in the eyes again and pray for the sweet release of death, but he held his ground. He kind of wished the ground would swallow him up and maybe spit him back out in this spot twenty-seven years ago so he could stop his young dumb self from ever turning his lovey dovey feelings for Eddie Kaspbrak into a physical, tangible thing on the side of the bridge. Maybe he’d chuck his pocket knife over the rail and into the Barrens for good measure, and give himself a good smack upside the head to really punctuate his point. But even though he wanted the ground to do all of that, he held it. Didn’t bolt.

Richie licked his lips. “Hey man, I know that I’m like, really fucking hilarious, but can I be let in on the punchline here?”

Eddie was laughing so hard he was wheezing, he wiped a tear away from his eyes. “Look,” he managed to say between chuckles, and he grabbed Richie’s hand and tugged him to the other side of the row, to the opposite fence. Eddie was practically crying, he found this so funny, but Richie raised his gaze to the old fencepost.

Where _E+R_ stared back at him in a familiarly neat script.

Oh.

_Oh._

“You’re shitting me,” Richie said, laughter bubbling up in his chest.

“I did it after you moved away,” Eddie said, sounding a little more sober. “I didn’t want to…I didn’t want to forget you, I guess.” Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie, held him tightly to his chest, tucked Eddie’s head beneath his chin like it was meant to go there, like they’d held each other like this a hundred times. Eddie squeezed him tightly, and Richie never ever ever wanted him to let go. Even if he suffocated Richie like a python. That actually sounded like a beautiful way to go.

(I love you)

“I’m sorry I left Derry,” Richie said after a long moment, even though they both knew perfectly well he’d fought tooth and nail when Went announced he was moving his practice to Portland just one short year after they faced It, even though they both knew that Richie had to be practically dragged kicking and screaming out of Derry, even though they’d both shared the brief but impossible dream of running away, of stowing Eddie in the trunk, of stealing their future away from parents who kept them apart.

Richie apologized for leaving, but in every syllable he was really saying _I’m sorry I forgot you._

“You didn’t want to,” Eddie said quietly, and Richie knew that they were speaking their code language again, that they understood each other perfectly. Eddie looked up at Richie, and _those eyes_, man, they rooted him to the spot. He could see all the different shades of brown, speckled with honeys and golds, could lose himself in them.

(I love you I love you I love you I love you)

Richie was about ready to say so, about ready to give voice to his twenty-seven year old confession— when Eddie beat him to the punch.

“You know that I’m stupidly in love with you, right?” Eddie said out of nowhere, and Richie suddenly thought that maybe he was floating again. Eddie didn’t even inhale before he continued, mouth running nonstop like it did when they were kids and Richie had found the perfect button to push. “Because you _very_ rudely interrupted me when I was trying to say it in the fucking sewers and it kind of seemed like you knew what I was going to say but you didn’t let me finish, and I don’t know if the initial thing is really as clear as it could be and even though you are a total dumbass, like all the time, I’ve been wanting to tell you that since I was about thirteen so I just nee—“

Richie decided to very rudely interrupt Eddie again.

And this time, it wasn’t a hurried kiss, a desperate we-almost-died kiss, a kiss to get him back from the Deadlights. This kiss was three decades in the making, years and years of daydreams, or carved initials, of not realizing it was even humanly possible to want something so desperately it hurt—and Richie was going to take his sweet, sweet time.

Eddie pulled away first, eyes wide, irises so dark they were nearly black. It seemed like a dream: Richie Tozier was kissing Eddie Kaspbrak against the Kissing Bridge, Richie Tozier was the reason Eddie’s eyes looked like that, Richie Tozier now knew that Eddie tasted like spearmint and the slightest hint of chocolate. He almost wanted to pinch himself, but then decided that if this was a dream he’d rather stay in it for a while. “So does that mean…?”

“Fuck yeah, Spaghetti Man. I’m stupidly in love with you too.” Richie leaned in for another kiss but Eddie turned his face so that Richie missed his mouth and got his uninjured cheek instead.

“Hey—“

“That’s the _worst_ nickname in the whole world.”

“I think it’s cute,” Richie said, fighting the urge to blow raspberries on the side of Eddie’s face just to see what he would do. “And I think _you’re_ cute, cute, cute!” Richie decided to pinch his cheek instead, like he did all the time when they were kids. And just like when they were kids, Eddie sprung back, swatted him away, eyes smiling even when his mouth scowled.

“You’re such a dick.”

“Yeah, but you’re in love with me.”

“I know,” Eddie groaned, but those eyes were still smiling. “Just my fucking luck.”

Richie smiled moonily down at him, feeling loopy, feeling high, and tucked Eddie close into his side. He pressed a kiss to Eddie’s temple, lingered in the ecstatic, unreal knowledge that he could do this all the time if he wanted to. And oh, how he wanted to.

“Hey, Eds?”

“Hey, Rich?”

Richie shot him his wild, wide grin. “Let’s get a dog.”

“Fat fucking chance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (yes I did add in that richie and sandy are both closeted la gays with an epic bromance, sue me)


	2. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is literally just incredibly self-indulgent, i decided i didn't want to end it in derry and the user LoganIsRelatable gave me this idea in a comment on the first part and what was supposed to be just one silly scene ending up becoming this so pls enjoy and leave comments bc they're my favorite things in the world ♡
> 
> (also this isn't edited so i'm sorry love u bye)

It had been a month since they left Derry, a month since defeating a demon clown from outer space, a month since Richie Tozier had kissed Eddie Kaspbrak and Eddie Kaspbrak had kissed back, and Richie hadn’t had a single dream.

And that suited him just fine.

They had decided to take the long way home—_home_, it made Richie’s heart sing every cheesy love song he knew_—_because, Eddie had pointed out that they had a beautiful car at their disposal, and all the time in the world, and Ben and Bev were already settling into Ben’s home in Nebraska, and maybe they could swing by the Grand Canyon, and speed through the Rockies, and see wide open country. “I always wanted to do this when I was a kid,” Eddie had said, a dream in his eyes. “Just get behind the wheel and see how far I could go.”

That was all Richie needed to hear.

They stayed in only the nicest motels, motels that Eddie had thoroughly vetted through Yelp reviews to verify that the sheets were as clean as motel sheets could be, that the threat of bedbugs were nonexistent, that they hadn’t been the scene of any particularly gruesome crime. Richie half-expected Eddie to bust out some Luminol and scan for stains.

They visited Ben and Bev in their house outside of Omaha, and while it was beautiful, Richie couldn’t see how Ben had managed to live in a house so huge and glassy and isolated all by himself for years. There was a brightness in that house— but it radiated directly from Beverly Marsh, a light so bright it warmed up every shadowed corner. Richie couldn’t stand the thought that once upon a time, twenty-odd years ago, he’d forgotten her.

It was a little weird at first, their first days free of danger, the first steps into the new reality of a Losers Club that was clown-free, but the four of them fell into a rhythm. They got tipsy on wine and FaceTimed the other Losers long into the night, drunk on chardonnay and the blinding wholeness they felt when they were together, like they were meant to fit perfectly into each other’s lives.

What was meant to be just a one-night stop on the road to California ended up being an 8-day stay, and Richie knew that he’d be tempted to stay forever in _Nebraska _of all places if they didn’t get a move on sooner or later. They cried a little on their last night there, as he whirled Bevvie around in the dance that they did for a talent show in 1989, as he tried to teach Ben the steps, as they all collapsed against each other in echoes of childhood laughter. He held Eddie’s hand, brushed his thumb absently against his knuckles, reveled in the shimmery, golden truth that they could hold hands like this for the rest of their long lives, that they could laugh with Bevvie from the Levy and Haystack Hanscom like they were all thirteen again, that they were happy and allowed to be.

Richie and Eddie decided to make a detour to Atlanta twenty-six minutes after pulling out of Ben and Bev’s driveway.

They called Mike, who had Stan’s address. They wound their way out of the heartland and into the south. Richie had been to Atlanta a time or two. He wondered if he’d ever passed Stan on the street, if he’d seen that all-grown up odd, amazing boy in passing and hadn’t even realized. A glimpse of dirty blonde curls. A little smirk, a knowing glint in his eyes. A stranger who knew him better than nearly anyone else, but couldn’t remember his name or his face or his horrible jokes or how he was never allowed to birdwatch with him again because he was physically incapable of shutting up. Some part of him ached.

They were filling up the tank of the Mustang at a Chevron about thirty-seven minutes away from the address Mike had given them. Richie went inside to use the restroom, and as he passed the wall of cigarettes behind the bored cashier scrolling through something on her phone. He felt the sudden, almost painful craving for a lit cigarette between his lips, for the pleasant, familiar burn of smoke against his throat. Maybe it would make his hands stop shaking. He saw the tidy rows of Winstons, the familiar eagle logo soaring against a white backdrop. Winston. Tastes good like a cigarette should.

(ain’t that right, eds?)

He thought of Eddie

(there’s so much cancer in the world because nerds like you and beverly marsh smoke cigarettes)

and asked for a pack of nicotine gum instead.

He was handing over the change when a postcard on one of those rotating racks by the counter caught his eye. It was a generic sort of wildlife photo, and printed on it was a glossy close-up picture of a tiny, blue bird. Richie knew there was another name for it, something Stan had told him a hundred lifetimes ago, but he couldn’t remember it for the life of him. But he knew Stan would love it.

“And a postcard, please.”

The cashier blew a gum bubble and rung him up.

—

Thirty-seven minutes later they pulled up in front of a tidy, sophisticated looking house and Richie felt all of the air leave his lungs. Eddie was driving, and Richie saw that his knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. Eddie stared straight ahead.

Richie reached over the console, took one of Eddie’s hands in his own, and squeezed it like Eddie’s touch was the only thing grounding him to earth. He noticed that Eddie was shaking a little. “You okay, Eds?”

Eddie took a deep breath and exhaled through his nostrils. “No.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

Richie looked out at the window, still clutching Eddie’s hand, and he felt the familiar sting of tears building up in his eyes as he whispered, “all I can think about is that it could have been you, too.”

Eddie moved his hands to either side of Richie’s face, turning his head, gentle but firm. His thumbs brushed against Richie’s cheekbones and Richie realized he’d been crying. “Hey, look at me.” Richie slowly lifted his gaze. “It wasn’t. I’m here. You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Eddie tried to smile, but it was watery. “And I fucking love you, okay?”

They leaned forward until their foreheads were touching and they were breathing the same air, breathing each other in, like they were reassuring each other that they were both very real and very alive. Fuck, it had been a long few weeks.

“I wonder what he was like, as a grown-up,” Richie said when they pulled back a little, still holding hands over the console.

“Think he still birdwatched?”

Richie chuckled a little, “oh yeah. Definitely. He was such a bird nerd.”

“Isn’t it weird?” Eddie began. “To not even remember someone existed until like, two weeks ago, but to miss them so much it hurts?”

“He was the best of us.”

“He was the best of us,” Eddie repeated.

After a second, Richie took one more deep, steadying breath and let go of Eddie’s hand to open the car door. “Well, my dear Edward? Ready to go meet our lovely Loser-in-law?” Richie was a little afraid how Stan’s wife would handle all of this. Two strange men, who she’d absolutely never have heard of in the years she’d shared with her late husband, showing up unannounced at her doorstep with teary eyes and a dumb bird postcard. The fleeting thought that maybe they should have called ahead, maybe they should turn around and forget the whole thing, mourn Stan in their own private way and leave the widow alone—but a much louder part of him urged him to keep walking. Patty was the closest thing they had to their best friend. She knew him, knew him in the years that they didn’t. Richie needed this. He needed to see the home that Stan the Man Uris had built for himself, maybe flip through a photo album if she’d let him, see if he could spot the traces of the boy he’d been in the man he’d become.

Before he knew it, he was knocking at the door.

Eddie intertwined their fingers as they stood, shoulder to shoulder on Stan’s stoop. Richie felt jittery, a different kind of restlessness than the kind he usually felt. He felt like he was standing on the edge of something, like he was about to face a harsh truth head on, and he wasn’t sure he was entirely ready for it. He _really_ wanted a cigarette.

They waited about ten seconds, and his nerves almost won out. He was about to tell Eds that they should head back to the car, turn tail and head west, maybe leave Richie’s pathetic little peace offering of a postcard on the front porch and blow this popsicle joint, baby, when there was a sudden shuffling, the clicking of a lock, and the door swung open.

Patty Uris was exceptionally pretty, Richie noticed.

(well done Stanley the Manley, well done)

She was petite and brunette, with wide, doe-like eyes that reminded him almost of Eddie’s. He expected them to be red-rimmed, glazed over with sorrow, but they were clear and bright. When she spoke, her voice was strong. Unwavering. He decided that he liked Patty Uris already. “Hi there, can I help you?”

Richie opened his mouth to speak, but for once, no words came out. Eddie squeezed his hand and began to talk for the both of them. “Are you Mrs. Uris?”

Patty nodded, “yes. Do I know you?”

Eddie continued, pressing on despite the way his voice cracked beneath unshed tears. “Well, no, but we knew—“

“Trashmouth?”

If Richie couldn’t find his voice before, he definitely couldn’t now. It felt like everything that kept him anchored to the ground drifted away, that he’d keel right over. Eddie’s grip on his hand was the only thing keeping him upright, and Eddie was squeezing his fingers so tight it kind of hurt.

(there’s no way this can’t be happening bev was so sure this must be a trick it’s a trick it’s a trick you’re losing your marbles, tozier)

Patty opened the door a little wider and looked behind her, where a man stood on the stairs, caught in the glow of the sunlight through the open door, almost otherworldly. A man with round, serious eyes. A man with a head of neat, sandy curls. A man who looked very much indeed like the boy he had been, the boy who traipsed around the Barrens with them, who rolled his eyes everytime Richie and Eddie started their bickering, who had cried in the sewers because he thought that the people he loved and who loved him had left him for dead. A boy who had been so serious and so scared and still so brave, who could get off a Good One when everyone least expected it, who had made Richie howl with laughter time and time and time again. A boy who said the word “fuck” during his bar mitzvah speech, a boy who always fought for his friends even if he wasn’t the loudest like Richie or the fiercest like Eddie or the bravest like Bill or the sweetest like Mike or the strongest like Bev or the smartest like Ben. A boy who loved birds.

Stanley Uris was standing on the stairway, his hazel eyes locked onto Richie’s. He was in a striped pajama set and a pair of house slippers, and his hair was slightly tousled like he’d been sleeping on it. Richie could see that a white bandage circled each wrist, no doubt wrapping all the way up his forearms beneath the sleeves of his shirt.

The first thought in Richie’s mind was that this must be like what had been happening to him all his lie, where he saw Eddie dying all over the place, in broad daylight even. Bev had been so sure. Stanley Uris had died in a bathtub two weeks ago. This wasn’t real. Richie had lost it. Eddie would have to cart him off to Juniper Hill back up in Maine, he’d spend the rest of his life in a padded room, seeing ghosts of the people he loved the fiercest—

The man who couldn’t be Stanley Uris

(because Stanley Uris had died)

looked between the two of them, and recognition broke like the sun through a cloudy sky on his face. “Is that Eddie? Eddie Kaspbrak?”

Richie clung to Eddie so tightly he was a little worried he’d cut off all circulation to Eddie’s hand and they’d have to cut it off or something. “Eddie tell me right now,” he whispered fiercely, “do you see him?”

Eddie’s eyes were trained on the man behind Patty, his mouth opened and closed around words he wasn’t able to see. Tears sprung to his eyes, but they were happy, he was beaming, a cautious sort of glee. That was answer enough for Richie, and he immediately started sobbing. The three men stood there for a second, caught between shock and a sudden onslaught of memories of summer bike rides and ice cream cones and flowery shower caps and the pure, unbridled love they felt, had always felt. They were three men suddenly transformed back into three boys, and Patty Uris was glancing between them in confusion, bless her heart.

She swung the door wide open and stepped aside. “Well fellas, come on in.” The strange suspended moment between them all popped like a bubble, and Stan took the stairs two at a time, and Eddie and Richie stepped over the threshold, and then they were all hugging and crying, feeling so much it was almost physically painful.

“I’ll get some lemonade,” Richie heard Patty say over their cry-laughter.

“Better make it something stronger, babylove,” Stan said as they all pulled away. Stan wiped his eyes and in a moment his composure was regained, although he looked brilliantly, openly happy in a way he hardly had as a kid. It was good to see. So fucking good to see.

“Shit, Manley,” Richie said, and shoved his shoulder because he didn’t know what else to do.

“It’s so good to see you, Stan,” Eddie said around his tears.

“Is everyone else—“

“We’re all okay,” Richie said with a laugh like he could hardly believe it himself, and then Stan was leading them through the foyer and into a cozy living room. A half-finished puzzle was on the coffee table. 

“And is—“

“Over,” Eddie said. “It’s all over Stan.”

“Thank fucking Christ.”

“Can you even say that if you’re Jewish?”

Stan shot him a withering look that was so familiar Richie burst into tears again. “Beep beep.”

“I missed you, Stan,” said Eddie, and Stan just smiled. He looked between the two of them and that smile turned into a smirk.

“So it only took twenty-seven years, huh?”

Eddie blushed, and Richie looked at him in shock. “Wha—you _knew_?”

Stan rolled his eyes fondly. “It was so obvious. I mean the hammock? The ‘fights?’ You two gave me so many headaches, I was at my _limit_.”

Patty came over with four glasses and a bottle of wine. Stan tucked her beneath his arm, kept her close, and Richie saw in her eyes the same glorious relief he felt everytime he looked at Eddie—the look of a person who loved and had come so close to having lost.

“To the Losers,” Eddie said, raising his glass in a toast.

“We always were the best three,” Richie joked.

Stan just looked over at three of the people he loved most in the world with that mysterious, knowing way of his, and said, “To the turtle.”

“To the fucking turtle!”

—

They stayed in Atlanta for ten days, and spent about half that time laughing over suddenly resurfacing memories and the other half crying about the almost-future where two of the people in that house were dead. Patty was a delight, like Stan but lighter, softer, just as sweet but more able to show it.

Ben and Bev were the first to show up. Richie had called an emergency group video chat with the rest of the Losers and the moment they all saw Stan’s face they were completely wrecked. They all bought flights to Atlanta within minutes. Richie was filled with a boyish elation that for the first time in over two decades, the Losers Club would all be together again. It felt like the ultimate victory.

An hour after Ben and Bev, a taxi dropped off Bill and Mike, and once the crying had subsided somewhat, Richie had pounded an imaginary gavel and put on his most pompous Voice and declared, “This meeting of the Losers Club is hereby called to order!”

The Uris household had two spare bedrooms, one a dedicated guest room and the second a sort of office-bedroom hybrid with a pull out couch. The home was big and well furnished but still cozy somehow. Very sophisticated. Very homey.

“You did pretty well for yourself, huh, Urine?”

“Shut up, Richie.”

Eddie and Richie were assigned the office room, Ben and Bev the guest room, and Mike and Bill offered to take the couches downstairs. They’d all offered to get hotel rooms in the city, but Patty Uris would have absolutely _none_ of that. She just shushed them incessantly every time one of them would bring it up and went about bringing out the extra linens and putting spare towels in the bathrooms.

Like he said, Richie liked Patty immediately.

And although the house had plenty of space for all of them, although they had perfectly comfortable beds upstairs and sheets that were probably 500-thread-count or something grown-up and fancy sounding, the seven of them all camped out in Stan’s living room, sprawled across couches and making little nests on the floor with pillows and comforters and snacking on popcorn and Cheez-its and candy. They were 13 and 40 all at once, laughing like kids into the morning, falling asleep mid-conversation, curling around each other like a bunch of puppies. Stan even stayed down there with them, and Patty would always brush a curl away from his forehead and press a kiss to his brow and he’d respond with a sleepy and gentle, “sleep tight, babylove.”

They didn’t talk about the bandages on his arms that Patty changed every morning, and none of them asked to see the budding scars. He was alive, and that was enough. He wasn’t afraid anymore, and that was enough. They would never let him feel that alone again, and that had to be enough.

They also didn’t talk about the sewer, both the battle that Stan had been present for in 1989 or the war that they’d won just weeks before. They didn’t need to. It was a part of them, but fading back into a distant little hollow of their minds reserved for nightmares and childhood fears. They’d never forget—Mike had been worried that they might, but in the weeks since they separated it seemed that they were remembering even more, instead of remembering less—but that horror didn’t define them. What defined them was lazy days spent in the summer sunshine and scraped knees and bike races down Up-Mile Hill. Laughter and light and life. Love.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Richie had said weeks ago, standing before the wreckage of Neibolt, still positioned slightly in front of Eddie, still ready to protect.

“Except for maybe love,” Ben had said, and Richie had cried, and they’d all walked away from the pit that had nearly killed them all and set off into the rising sun.

And now, all these weeks later, cracking jokes and watching movies and gossiping about long-forgotten classmates, Richie believed that with his whole heart. Childhood was over. It had to end. But the warmth between them never would.

Nothing lasts forever.

Except for maybe love.

Before they left, Richie pulled Stan aside and took out the folded up postcard in his pocket. He passed it over to Stan. “I got this before I came here, I was gonna leave it on your—well…”

Stan unfolded it, and for a second his eyes clouded with the kind of emotion Richie’d never been able to place. He looked at the picture of the bird for a moment, and then a moment more, and suddenly Richie realized he was a total idiot. It was a dumb idea, he should have just left it alone, Stan had been through so much and—

“It’s a blue bunting.”

“Huh?”

Stan’s voice was kind of thick. “A blue bunting. Native to Mexico and Central America. I never saw one up in Maine but there was a picture of one in my book and—and it was always my favorite as a kid.”

“Yeah, well,” Richie said, suddenly feeling very vulnerable. “Good guess.”

Stanley flipped it over, read the message written in Richie’s hasty scrawl. Richie hoped he didn’t notice the places where tears had caused the ink to bleed a bit, but of course he would.

It said, simply: _We love you. Thanks for showing up, Stan._

—

They were in Richie’s kitchen. Eddie was trying to make salmon and Richie was trying to distract him as much as possible, if only to see the little furrow that popped up between Eddie’s brows when he was a little bit pissed off, to earn a tiny little glare. He’d decided he’d dedicate the rest of his life to pushing every single one of Eddie’s buttons. It was too damn fun.

Eddie was wearing a cute little apron—really just a plain, boring apron, but on Eddie it was decidedly the cutest apron on planet earth as far as Richie was concerned—and it tied in the back. Richie made a game of tugging the knot undone. Every time Eddie would let out an annoying little groan and say “Rich-_ie__,” _in the squeaky way he did when Richie exasperated him as kids.

That got old after a while, so Richie tried another button.

Richie knew from many hammock fights that Eddie was extremely ticklish, and he knew from his three-decades-long giant crush on Eddie the exact spots that would get to him the most. He succeeded three times, almost melted right into the floor at the high, pealing sound of Eddie’s surprised giggles, before Eddie swatted him away with a wooden spoon Richie didn’t even know he owned and banished him to the other side of the kitchen island. “You’re gonna make me burn the salmon, dickwad,” Eddie huffed, shoving the filets around in the pan with frustration.

“Oh Spaghetti, I just love all your pet names for me,” Richie said, batting his eyelashes and fixing Eddie with a moony look. Eddie just glanced up briefly and let out a “Hmph.”

Time to change tactics. Richie leaned forward across the island, resting his forearms on the granite. He drummed out the riff of “Come Together” against the counter with his fingers and huffed out an exaggeratedly bored sigh.

“Don’t get so close to the stovetop, dummy,” Eddie said.

“Aye aye,” Richie responded, “I love when you boss me around, cap’n,” he half-joked. He actually did love it, not that Eddie ever needed to know. That knowledge would make him way too powerful. Richie smirked. “Reminds me of the nights I had with your mom, after we’d wined and dined—“

“Oh my _God_,” Eddie groaned, but there was affection behind it, “don’t you ever just shut up?” Richie saw Eddie trying to hold back a fond smile.

“Why don’t you make me?” Richie said, and leaned even further over the counter, sure to avoid to stovetop like Eddie had commanded. This time Eddie couldn’t hold back his grin, and Richie was an inch away from kissing that smile—_because he got to do that whenever he liked!_— when suddenly the door to his apartment opened with a slam.

“Hello, anyone there? I’m looking for my ol’ buddy Richie Tozier who decided to just fuck off to bumfuck-nowhere, Maine, for _over a month_ without telling his dearest friend in this fucking town, and all I get is a lousy ‘sorry kid, had a high school reunion, see you whenever!’ text?! You’re lucky I love you, dipshit, I hope your little quest for self-discovery was worth it, because you’ve got a _lot_ of explaining to do—Oh—“

Sandy’s eyes were wide as she rounded the corner into the kitchen, dropping her spare key on the counter with a clang. She had a carton of Chinese in one hand and her purse in another. She looked between the two of them, and didn’t seem so pissed anymore.

“Uh, hi,” Eddie said, and Richie realized they were still very much within kissing distance and so he pulled back a bit and cleared his throat. “You must be Sandy.”

She looked Eddie up and down, and then shot Richie an approving glance and an extremely unsubtle thumbs up. Richie actually _blushed_. “Uh, Sandy Sadowski, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to—“

“Eddie?” Sandy interrupted. Eddie blinked slowly back at her.

“Um, yeah, I’m Eddie Kaspbrak.”

Sandy barked out a laugh and gave Richie a surprised but still smug grin. “Oh my God! I fucking knew it!”

Eddie’s eyes were still owlish with confusion, and he looked at Richie with a bewildered expression. God, he was so fucking cute. “How’d she—“ He turned back to Sandy. “How’d you—“

“Eddie Kaspbrak,” Sandy said, shaking her head slightly like she could hardly believe it herself. “It’s so nice to meet the guy Richie’s been dreaming about for years.”

Richie’s ears burned and he didn’t have to turn his head to know that Eddie was looking at him with a mixture of pride and a pleased sort of shock and no small amount of smugness. Fuck. Richie’d never live this down. Armed with this knowledge, Eddie was _way_ too powerful. Richie would never stand a chance. Maybe he never stood one anyway.

Eddie walked around the island and wrapped an arm around Richie’s waist, tucking himself comfortably against Richie’s side. Richie’s face felt hot, and he couldn’t believe that he was blushing like he was a teenager flustered by the mere presence of Eddie Kaspbrak. Fuck, he really never had stood a chance.

Richie grinned through his sudden sheepishness, slung an arm around Eddie’s shoulder, and pressed a quick kiss to the top of his head. Sandy was still smiling at the two of them, still shaking her head, still very pleased with herself. “So, Sandy dearest,” he said, “would you like to join me and Spaghetti here for dinner? I’ve got some people I want to tell you about.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if eddie lives stan lives i don't make the rules i just enforce them
> 
> (also i kind of figured that our favorite benevolent turtle god used his last lil bit of power to somehow influence patty to check up on stanley and get him the medical help he needs before he bled out, so the moral of the story is never mess with maturin the turtle or patty blum uris)

**Author's Note:**

> Sandy would be Richie's bridesmaid at the wedding, fight me on this
> 
> \------
> 
> This was like, 1000000 times harder to write than One Last Good One, and I'm not entirely sure why :( The ending gave me a ton of trouble and I've written like a hundred different version but I don't want to let it rot away on my computer and thought I might as well share it with the world, they deserve their happy ending (especially since I killed off Richie last time oops). Please let me know what you think and hopefully you enjoy! Thank you so much for reading, I'm still so new at this and every single comment means the world.


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